It was a tough Week 1. I laid more than a touchdown twice, and lost both. I lost both overs. My fundamentals have never been strong, but they were pretty hilarious in Week 1.
We still came out of it with a 3-5 start and some potential. All three wins were pretty straightforward; the two unders were easily right, and Minnesota was sluggish early but still overcame a pick-six to go up double digits before a late Chicago score made the final margin 3 points, so the third win also felt like the right side in the end. They did get a pretty favorable DPI call that helped turn that game, if you wanted to dispute that.
And a couple of the losses were tough, and arguably bad beats. As I wrote in last week’s writeup where I recapped the opener, missing the PHI-DAL over was an extremely rare occurrence after the way the first half went, and it was helped along by a lightning delay. Denver not covering the 8.5 was also hilarious — they held Tennessee to 133 total yards but Bo Nix turned the ball over three times, and then Marvin Mims also fumbled a punt for a free field goal, and then they still held an 8-point lead in field goal range late but Sean Payton elected to call the “throw the ball away and turn it over on downs” play instead of trying the long field goal that could have given us a cover, for reasons that are hard to explain. It seems like maybe he was excessively concerned about a block and felt like the Titans definitely couldn’t score on his defense, but the play he actually called was quite ridiculous.
We lost Jalen Carter right away to change the Eagles bet, and Xavier Worthy right away to change the Chiefs bet. I’m not saying they would have won otherwise, but I almost certainly wouldn't have made either bet had I known those guys would not play the majority of the games. The CIN/CLE over was just wrong, as Cincinnati’s tactics all through August to ensure they didn’t start slow just did not work. They were awful offensively.
But we’re off! For a week that didn’t go well at all, we didn’t get buried. We’re back at it here in Week 2. As always, all minus bets are bet to win 1 unit, all plus bets are risk 1 unit.
New England Patriots at Miami Dolphins
Pick: MIA -1.5, -110 (Draftkings)
Pick: Over 43.5, -102 (DraftKings)
I gave the first bet out in Discord early this week, and despite some injury news working against Miami with a couple offensive linemen out, and despite much being made about the Miami secondary, it’s actually moved to 2.5 points at a lot of books. I wrote the below on Monday:
Everyone's rushing to say how bad Miami looked, and I'm not thrilled to be backing a defense that gave up several long possessions last week, but we basically have a narrative that had already formed that implosion risk was high and Mike McDaniel is going to get fired, and then a weird game where the Dolphins' starters only got six (6) possessions before giving way to Zach Wilson late.
Three of the first four possessions ended due to turnovers, and the fifth ended on downs in Colts' territory because they were already buried. The sixth was the TD possession people talked about like "finally they scored" but it just wasn't like that.
The Patriots also looked pretty poor in their debut, losing at home. I didn't see a lot that justifies Miami not getting the normal 2.5-3 points as the Week 2 home team.
I do think Miami is going to look good offensively back at home here, especially after the Raiders found a lot of space against the Patriots’ defense last week as Geno Smith threw for 362 yards. But with a banged-up secondary, and with the Patriots talking about shifting their RB usage in a way that could easily be interpreted as meaning more TreVeyon Henderson, I also like adding the over here.